US aid freeze puts HIV-positive orphans in Kenya at risk as medical supplies dwindle

Two-year-old Evans was brought to the Nyumbani Children’s Home in Nairobi, Kenya a year ago, suffering from HIV and tuberculosis. With no family to care for him, Evans was referred to the orphanage by a health center after he stopped responding to medical treatment.Nyumbani Children’s Home is the reason Evans is still alive. But political decisions made thousands of miles (kilometers) away might spell the end of his short life. Nyumbani provides him and around 100 other children with antiretroviral medication, which they have been receiving from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) through the Kenyan government.U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent executive order to freeze USAID’s funding means Nyumbani’s access to life-saving antiretroviral drugs, which stop the HIV virus from replicating in the body, may end soon.Trump’s order seeks to review almost all U.S. foreign aid for 90 days and his administration has moved to shut down USAID. The effects are beginning to set it in, with thousands of people losing their jobs globally and humanitarian programs around the world disrupted.For children at Nyumbani Children’s Home, it’s a life and death situation.As he plays with other preschoolers, Evans is oblivious to his uncertain future, despite the worry on his caregivers’ faces.The tiny graves at one end of the orphanage compound are a bleak reminder of what a future without USAID looks like for the children. It’s a scenario Sister Tresa Palakudy — who has been looking after children here for 28 years — is well familiar with having worked at the orphanage before USAID started helping.”When we started caring for them, they didn’t look like they had life in them,” she said. “One after another, they died. It was so painful, and I don’t want to see that happen again.”When Nyumbani, which means “Home” in Swahili, was started in 1992 by Christian missionaries, antiretroviral medication had not been introduced. Back then, it operated as a rescue center for orphaned and abandoned children living with HIV, offering largely palliative care.